What's the best way to make a giant crater displacement?

[KingOfSpace]

Hammer newbie question time!

What's the best way to get a giant crater displacement?

I'm making a map that takes place inside a giant crater and I need to get nice, steep, sloping walls, but not so sloping that players can climb 'em.

I've tried just a giant displacement and crater-shaping it but it comes out all stretchy


And I'll need to have some holes in it so I can put stairs to the underground section...

 

[grazr]

Players can't climb displacements at 45 degrees IIRC, maybe 46 degrees, although they can climb brush geometry at 45 degrees (strange fact). But you'll want it to be obvious that you can't climb out so you'll probably have a more acute angle on the crater walls. You can use the icon to show you in Hammer which displacements cannot be walked on (they will be highlighted in yellow).

How big is this crater going to be? Like Hydro's radio dish?

 

[KingOfSpace]

Players can't climb displacements at 45 degrees IIRC, maybe 46 degrees, although they can climb brush geometry at 45 degrees (strange fact). But you'll want it to be obvious that you can't climb out so you'll probably have a more acute angle on the crater walls. You can use the icon to show you in Hammer which displacements cannot be walked on (they will be highlighted in yellow).

How big is this crater going to be? Like Hydro's radio dish?

The crater's gon' basically be the entire map, so like 4096x3200.

Thanks for the Displacement Walk tip, did not know this!

 

[Fish 2.0]

The crater's gon' basically be the entire map, so like 4096x3200.

Thanks for the Displacement Walk tip, did not know this!

Depending on how much of it is a playable game area you might want to consider putting the walls of the crater in a 3d skybox. That way you could make it looks a lot larger than it would have been.